by Rita Herron
As soon as they stepped inside the room, Antwaun entered, handcuffed and shackled. At first glance, the brothers resembled one another, and a frisson of attraction lit her insides. Antwaun’s hair was wavier, and instead of dark brown eyes, his were an odd silver cobalt-blue. They settled on her, steely with rage.
He looked every bit like a killer.
She sucked in a deep breath, and searched for recognition, for some memory to surface, even a fleeting one that might alert her to the fact that she had known him. For a brief second, she felt it. Then the strong sense that he hated her for what she’d put him through overwhelmed her, and she moved closer to Damon.
“Kendra?” Antwaun stalked toward her, his eyes scrutinizing her every feature as if he were looking at a ghost.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry…I…don’t remember you.”
Agent Dubois cleared his throat. “Antwaun, I found this woman at a rehab hospital.” He explained how she’d wound up at Dr. Pace’s, about her amnesia and the plastic surgery. “According to Dr. Pace, she’s been hospitalized for the past several months.”
“Why are you doing this to me, Kendra?” Antwaun asked, his gaze still glued to her. “The last time I saw you, we talked about having a life together. Were you just using me?”
She backed away, his anger palpable. “I…I’m sorry. I don’t remember that at all.”
Antwaun jerked his gaze toward his brother as if he thought she was lying.
“She’s agreed to be fingerprinted and have her DNA tested,” Agent Dubois said. “We’ll find out the truth, Antwaun.”
Crystal bit down on her lip. As much as she wanted to know her identity and had half hoped she was this reporter, she sensed she wouldn’t have gotten involved with Agent Dubois’s brother. He was certainly handsome, but regarding him she felt more fear than chemistry.
“Jean-Paul’s checking into Kendra’s family,” Damon told Antwaun. “Soon we’ll know if Kendra has a sister, cousin, someone who looks like her.”
Antwaun turned those glacier eyes on her. “You’re lying, trying to run away and get a new identity—and trying to leave me framed for being corrupt when I’m not. Turn over your notes, Kendra, whatever you had. Let me look at them, for God’s sake.”
A dizzy spell assaulted Crystal, and she clutched the chair. Then anger suddenly rallied inside her. She hadn’t asked for any of this, at least not that she recalled. “Look, I wish I remembered you and what happened. Like I told your brother, I woke up several months ago in a hospital with burns and injuries all over my body.” She pushed up the sleeves of her shirt to reveal scars. “I almost died, and have undergone one surgery after another.” She wanted to hit him and lash out. “I’m not pretending to have amnesia. I’d give anything to have my life back.”
An odd look muddied Damon’s eyes. “The injuries and plastic surgery are for real,” Damon said. “I saw photos, Antwaun. She’s telling the truth.”
Antwaun folded his big arms. “That doesn’t mean she didn’t use me. Maybe Swafford or the real dirty cop she was investigating discovered she was on to him, and he caused her so-called accident. Maybe she tried to disappear, and somehow faked the dead woman’s fingerprints in the system so everyone would think she’d died.”
Crystal swallowed hard, terror seizing her. “If that’s true, then I’m still in danger.”
“She’s right,” Damon said. “And if that’s the case, helping her remember is our best bet to clear you, Antwaun, and find the person setting you up.”
Antwaun glared at her, but nodded, although his mouth tightened as the guard approached. Damon assured his brother that he would get to the bottom of the matter, then escorted her to another office and collected her DNA. After that, she endured his taking her fingerprints, all the time feeling as if she were a criminal, not a medical victim.
Damon placed a hand at her waist to steady her as he walked her to his car. “I’m sorry my brother was so brusque, Crystal. But he’s having a rough time.”
She nodded, although she was trembling. “He thinks this is easy on me? I’ve lived in the darkness for months,” she said in a tired voice. “I need some answers.”
They paused at the door, and he looked at her as if he wanted to reach out and soothe her, assuage her fears. But if she was Kendra, she had been his brother’s lover.
“Even if finding them might turn up something you don’t want to hear?”
She nodded again, although her mind raced with questions and uncertainty.
Maybe no one was looking for her because she was a bad person. Maybe her nightmares had been real, and someone had tried to kill her. The same person who’d framed Antwaun.
If so, that cop might come after her again. She scanned the dark exterior of the police station, her skin crawling.
* * *
AS CRYSTAL CLIMBED into the car, Damon checked his phone for messages and saw that the governor had called, wanting info about the case. He’d also left a reminder about the hero’s welcome during the Memorial Day parade.
Damon didn’t intend to go but would tell the governor later. Make up an excuse. The parade was for heroes, and he wasn’t one.
Beside him, Crystal massaged her temples.
He was contemplating where to take her for the night to ensure her safety when his cell phone trilled. Jean-Paul again. “Yeah?”
“How did it go with Antwaun?”
“Not well,” Damon said. “What did you find out, Jean-Paul?”
“Kendra Yates’s father died when she was twelve, but her mother is still alive. She was an only child, though. No sister. No long-lost twin.”
Jean-Paul’s phone beeped in that he had another call, and he put Damon on hold. Damon glanced at Crystal again. She’d leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. After the ordeal of her surgeries, she obviously needed rest.
Jean-Paul clicked back on the line. “Shit, you’re not going to believe this, but the lieutenant just called. Locals found a woman’s body out in the bayou. At least pieces of one. It’s been mutilated.”
“They know who she is?” Damon asked, although a bad feeling clawed at him.
“No, but she’s missing a hand.”
“Where?”
Jean-Paul gave the GPS coordinates and Damon cranked the engine and sped from the parking lot. They might just have found the rest of Kendra Yates’s body. Or at least the body of the woman they’d first thought to be her.
So whom was the woman sitting next to him?
What was her connection to a severed hand in the bayou?
CHAPTER TEN
CRYSTAL HATED FEELING WEAK, but fatigue weighed her down. She refused to go back to Dr. Pace and that hospital, but she did need to find a bed soon.
The grim look Damon gave her made her nerves ping with anxiety. Something was very, very wrong.
“What was that call about?” she asked.
“My other brother, Jean-Paul. He’s a detective with the NOPD. The police found a body. It belongs to the woman with the missing hand.”
Bile rose to her throat. This was the woman they’d thought to be Kendra?
He cleared his throat. “I need to go to the crime scene ASAP.”
“All right.”
He veered around the street corner, tires squealing as he increased his speed. “I’m going to drop you at a safe place to rest for the night first.”
“If it’s out of your way, you don’t have to do that. I could wait in the car.”
He shook his head. “No, it might take hours to process the scene.” He shot her a worried glance. “You obviously need some sleep.”
Relief surged through her, and she sagged against the door.
She couldn’t think anymore tonight.
She closed her eyes and must have dozed off because the next time she opened them, they were parking in front of a gray Victorian house complete with turrets, a wraparound porch and a white picket fence. The house looked spooky set against the inky sky and the swamp
land. A black cat lay curled beneath a swing on the front porch and two others flanked each side of the doorway like watchdogs.
She couldn’t imagine this house belonging to the tough detective.
“I thought you were taking me to a hotel,” she said.
“You said you knew Lex. This place…It belongs to his grand-mère. It’s also close to my house if you need me.” He hesitated, switched off the engine. “I don’t want you to be alone, not after just leaving the hospital.”
His concern warmed her heart, and chopped away at the distrust she’d felt earlier. If Damon wanted to harm her, he’d had plenty of opportunity.
“But it’s late. I hate to disturb Lex’s grandmother.”
A smile tugged at Agent Dubois’s face. His first ever, as far as she knew. “Esmeralda is a late-night person,” he said. “She’s a little eccentric, but her doors are always open.” He reached out and rubbed his thumb along her cheek. “You’ll be safe here.”
Her throat convulsed. “How much danger do you think I’m in, Agent Dubois?”
“I don’t know. And I asked you to call me Damon.” His smile faded, making her wish for its return. She wanted to see more of that side of him, rather than the cold, hard man he presented on the surface. “You don’t remember your accident or your past. And you look almost identical to a woman who disappeared a while ago, a woman we think may have been murdered. A woman who might have been connected to you in some way.”
“I…I have wondered if my accident was really an accident,” she admitted. “I’ve had nightmares where I feel like someone was after me.”
He nodded, that dark intensity back in his eyes. “When we learn your name, I’ll help you find out the rest.”
“Thank you, Damon. I know you’re hoping I can help clear your brother.”
“I am,” he admitted, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “But I’ll help you even if you can’t.”
He meant it, too. She heard the conviction in his statement and knew this man was one she could rely on. Trust.
A second later, self-doubt filled her.
She sensed she’d trusted another man before and had been wrong. So wrong that something bad had happened because of her misjudgment.
* * *
ESMERALDA KNEW THE WOMAN was coming before she showed up at the door with Damon Dubois. Lex had told her.
Poor Lex. He had held on long enough to try and save the woman. But Lex needed to move on. Still, he clung to the world in between life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell.
For protection, she’d sprinkled salt around the edges of the house outside, on the doorstep and inside the room in the adjoining cottage where the woman would sleep. And she had primed the cats and summoned their magic. She might be ninety-one now and blind as a bat, but she could see the danger coming, and she would use her insight and the powers of her feline friends to protect Lex’s friend.
After all, if Lex saved her, she would, in return, become his savior.
The knock sounded at the same time the teakettle whistled, so she turned off the stove, tugged her black shawl around her neck and hobbled to the door.
In spite of the sultry heat rolling off the swampland behind her, a bitter chill filled the room as if the angel of death waltzed around the woman, begging her for one last dance.
An evil force had risen from the bowels of the backwater to try and take her before God had called. But she was somehow sure that the woman’s journey was not meant to end yet.
“Esmeralda, can we come in?”
She smiled at the handsome federal agent who had once been Lex’s friend. “Certainly. I’ve been expecting you.”
The pretty woman hesitated at the doorway as if wondering how Esmerelda had known—Damon Dubois hadn’t bothered to phone.
“Esmeralda has a way of seeing things,” Agent Dubois said in a husky voice.
The old woman swept her hand to the side to gesture them inside, and the tabby Persimmon brushed her legs in acknowledgment. Gorgon, the striped male, purred his delight, and Titan, her fat gray friend, swished his tail at her feet.
When Damon had seated himself and the woman on the antique sofa, he introduced Lex’s friend. “Her name…Well, we’re uncertain about her identity, but for now we’re calling her Crystal.”
“Hello, Esmeralda,” Crystal said in a low voice. “I’m sorry for disturbing you so late at night. But Damon told me that Lex is your grandson. He was so kind to me in the hospital.”
“You do not disturb me, child. I am here for you now, just as Lex would want.” A grin tugged at her mouth as Crystal whispered a soothing word to Midnight.
“So you like cats,” Esmeralda said.
Crystal laughed softly. “Yes. You have quite a collection.”
“The kids around here call me the Cat Lady.” Yet some of the kids feared her and her magic. “The felines are my friends, my protectors, all that I need.”
“This black one is watching me as if he’s human.”
Esmeralda cackled with laughter as she shuffled to the stove in the adjoining kitchen. Crystal must be a supersensitive, with how Midnight was watching her and her ability to see Lex.
Esmerelda settled the teakettle and three cups on a tray along with sugar and cream and carried it to the coffee table. There she poured each of them a cup of the chamomile tea, sat back and sipped hers while the agent explained Crystal’s predicament.
“She needs a safe place to rest for the night,” he said. “And I have to go. A woman has been murdered, her body found in the bayou. The crime-scene unit and police are already there.”
Esmeralda nodded, reached to the couch’s armrest and pressed a hand over his. “Crystal will be fine here.”
His clothes rustled as he turned toward Crystal. “I need to go. I’ll come back tomorrow and check on you.”
“Thank you for…everything, Damon,” Crystal said.
Agent Dubois stood, removed a cell phone from his pocket, then handed it to Crystal. “Take my phone and call me if you need anything. I’ve already programmed my number in. Now get some rest and I’ll be back in the morning.”
Esmeralda walked him to the door and lowered her voice to a near whisper in his ear. “There is an evil force at work in the bayou, a depravity of such kind as we haven’t seen the depths of before.”
“I have a feeling you’re right.” Agent Dubois leaned closer. “We found a woman’s severed hand in the swamp, and tonight police found the rest of her body, mutilated.”
Esmeralda frowned at the fact that the devil had won.
“Esmeralda, I don’t know who Crystal is, but she said something that disturbed me at the hospital. She claimed Lex had visited her, that he was at the hospital the same time she was.” He paused, studied Esmeralda’s craggy face. “But I thought you told me that Lex died, and Dr. Pace said the same thing. Is he still alive?”
Esmeralda’s thin lips straightened into a tight line. “No, he’s not of this earth. I stood by his grave myself.”
“I’m sorry, Esmeralda. Lex was…a good man.”
Not always, she wanted to say, but refrained.
This man and Lex shared some of the same regrets. They had teamed together in their own way to fight for justice, yet they’d created pain in their wake. Agent Dubois already carried the weight of the world upon his shoulders. She’d felt the burden of his sadness and guilt in his aura the first time they’d met. He was responsible to the point of denying his own needs.
Crystal held the key to releasing him and Lex both from their hell. Only the devil would try to destroy her and the agent before peace could be found.
Esmerelda wished she could assure him that his anguish and suffering would soon end, but that was not the case. Not yet.
* * *
ONCE, IN KUWAIT, Damon had been shot and almost died. He remembered lying in the insufferable heat of the desert, closing his eyes and hallucinating that he had a woman who loved him waiting at home. For days, he’d held on to life through th
at fantasy, telling himself he had to live so he could have one more night in her bed. One more night to feel her lush naked body wrapped up with his, his hard cock thrusting inside her, her whispering his name in the throes of passion.
He had felt dread for the last few months, had moved through each day like a zombie, with no joie de vivre, joy of life, tortured by the screams of another woman he had caused to die.
So, Damon’s blood ran hot when Crystal appeared at the door and touched his arm. The trust he saw reflected in her luminous eyes nearly made his knees buckle. He didn’t deserve for her to look at him as if he were some kind of hero, and he felt humbled by it.
Touching this woman, being with her, made him want to live. As if she’d read his mind or shared his ridiculous fantasy, she stood on tiptoe, brushed her fingers along his jaw then pressed her lips to his. The tentative kiss was so tender and sweet that his heart pounded with the need to deepen it.
Then something much more primal and elemental passed between them, and his body surged with desire. Damn.
But he felt the chill of the other woman’s dying breath on his neck, and he pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, flushing as if she thought he hadn’t wanted it. The trouble was he wanted it too damn badly. In fact, he wanted her lips on him everywhere.
But he had a case to solve and she was part of it.
Besides, if she was Kendra, his brother had been in love with her….
And she had deceived him.
He cleared his throat of emotions, wishing he could clear his mind of the memories of that woman’s death. “Like I said, call if you need me.”
Struggling against temptation, he spun on his heel and ducked out the door, well aware that even being blind, somehow Esmeralda had seen the kiss. He was playing with fire.
Worry nagged at Damon as he left Crystal and drove toward the bayou and the body. He forced himself to forget that kiss and to analyze the situation. Crystal was exhausted, confused, frightened. She probably should have stayed at the hospital, but he didn’t trust Pace worth a damn. The fact that she claimed she’d talked to Lex disturbed him even more. Pace had said she’d suffered a head injury, and she’d no doubt been heavily medicated for months. She must have heard Lex’s name and hallucinated a visitor, or confused him with someone else. There was no other explanation.
